that s pretty swift action. for a day s work. many people making the point that if you contrast that with president obama, the only victim, the only person who s been fired is actually an organization, cgi which created the obamacare website. everybody else still in place. look, i think he did himself a lot of good by stepping forward and being very straightforward and very candid and very blunt in taking immediate action. i do agree with george that the jury is still out as to whether or not this sort of brash style in new jersey is transferable anywhere else in the country. that was going to be the big question anyway. i think he did himself some good by contrasting with the normal, routine way of handling these things which is to be evasive, sort of trim on the edges. you ll notice we haven t been hearing a lot from the clinton camp about this. in contrast with president bill clinton and with secretary clinton s handling of benghazi. i think it s going to be hard for democrats t
though we just had a cut in november. so it s hard to listen to our colleagues on one hand saying they want to fight the war on poverty when they re taking all these initiatives to throw more people into poverty. what do you think of senator rubio s proposal to do away with the earned income tax credit that lump sum payment that people get at the end of the year and replace it with federal wage? i think the earned income tax credit has helped. i think it s a fact, it helped lift people out of poverty. i d be opposed to that. that has been a bipartisan idea. republicans and democrats joined together to pass the earned income tax credit to reward work. to say to people, if you work hard, you re at least going to earn an income that is above the poverty level. so that s a very important effort as are these others. so we should not use numbers to say we re not winning the war on poverty because we don t count these programs. we re not winning because we still have 47 million americans
republicans coldhearted? all they want to do is they want to pay for this unemployment insurance, et cetera. no, that s not the case. a lot of people are still opposed it to. we put forward a proposal in the house before we took the winter break to pay for it by cutting excessive ag subsidies. we were denied an opportunity to even vote on that measure. the reality is you listen to people like rand paul. they take the insulting position that these people are just sitting back taking the compensation check when they re required to look for work. if it pays for it and there are offering to extent it and par for it in 2024, is that a real offer? look, i think you have to look at what s going on in states like north carolina. obviously last july north carolina s emergency
you re getting the stuffing beat out of you in florida in the second congressional district for your proposal to require work for people to have food stamps. the bigger part of that is the temporary assistance for needy family programs is probably one of the most successful programs in the country congress has ever come out with. and it causes republicans to apply that more broadly across the board. do you agree? look, we literally patterned, it s ironic that we patterned our bill as it applies to able-bodied individuals that are of working edge, mentally, physically, psychologically able to work. like the famous surfer we highlighted? absolutely. excluded children. excluded the disabled. excluding seniors. that they work, train for work, look for work or volunteer. and i think that they d be productive. i think that over 80% of america agrees with that premise. so i think it makes sense. but it only applies, again, to the able-bodied individuals without dependents. is that suc
here. i think candid discussions with the president are important. i think reading about it in a book can only harm those types of discussions in the future. in regards to vice president biden, i served with vice president biden. i still do. he s still the president of the senate. so he is his views are widely respected in the united states senate and among the people in washington. i think about new start and the ability of getting that agreement with russia, we would not have gotten it but with the hard work of vice president biden. so he s been a trusted adviser and person i think is very solid on the issues. in the couple minutes we have left i would like to turn to benghazi. of course, the state department designated ansar al shahry and some people have been listed as terrorist organizations and the mastermind behind the attack in the consulate there in benghazi. senator inhoff, you took particular issue with the new york times article which said that there was no al qaeda